Professor Vjosa Musliu

Vrije Universiteit Brussel

European History
2021-2022 3. Conservative backlashes
Conservative backlashes – class overview
1. Explaining the French Revolution (Censer 2003 article)

2. A conservative backlash
1. International reactions to the French Revolution
2. Congress of Vienna (1815): peace & the restoration of monarchies
3. Liberal challenges: 1830 revolutions

3. Collapse of the conservative order:

1. 1848 revolutions
2. Democratisation in 2nd half of 19th C (Pittaluga et al. 2015) (next
week)
1. Explaining the French Revolution

What caused the French Revolution?

Why then, in 1789?

1. Explaining the French Revolution
• Theories on the causes of the French Revolution:

Despite its status as a political event, the French Revolution has been
very heavily associated with social explanations.

1. A Marxist interpretation: class-competition (bourgeoisie against nobility)

2. The victory of Enlightenment ideas : popular sovereignty; reason and
rights
3. Linking social and ideational theories: changing income and wealth
patterns and strategies/rates of upward mobility; re-shaping dominant
beliefs regarding power and governance
 1. Explaining the
French Revolution
1. A Marxist interpretation:
• Fr. revolution as a class struggle “bourgeoisie-
nobility”
• With the industrial proletariat pushing the
bourgeois to more “left-wing positions”

• Karl Marx (1818-1883):

• System of production affects societal structure and
dominant beliefs/ideology
• Inherent conflict
• Class consciousness as catalyst for revolution
• Bourgeois dominance would bring about a capitalist
society; replacing the plurality of conflicts by a
duality: bourgeois-proletariat

Want to hear more?: School of Life video

1. Explaining the French Revolution
1. A Marxist explanation

“the impossibility of explaining the Revolution by the

triumph of an unidentifiable capitalist bourgeoisie over an
unidentifiable feudal aristocracy”

- Pierre Goubert, historian

1. Explaining the French Revolution
1. A Marxist explanation:
Invalidated by historical evidence:
1. False distinction between the “feudal aristocracy” and the “capitalist
bourgeoisie”
• Feudal system around which France was organised had already severely
weakened
• That meant that many noble privileges associated with capital bourgeoisie or
the feudal aristocracy were already weakened -> there already was a lot of
overlap between these two classes
• Not really separate economic classes:
• Bourgeois were not just "budding capitalists”: they included rentiers, traders,
land-owners, public officials,… at the time
• Aristocracy invested heavily in trade and proto-industry
• Revolution slowed down the process of industrialisation
1. Explaining the French Revolution
1. A Marxist explanation (dominant in 20th C):
Invalidated by historical evidence:
2. Bourgeois lacked class consciousness
• Provincialism of the Old (Ancien) regime prevented from forming a
generalised/uniform class-consciousness; great variance across local
cultures
• The main catalyst for revolution: lack of uniformity – not a basis for
mobilisation
3. Bourgeois did not – on average – hold revolutionary aspirations
• Aspired to become nobles and buy noble titles
• Wished to preserve ”rank and order”
1. Explaining the French Revolution
2. Revolution as the victory of Enlightenment Ideas (1970s)

François Furet (1978) Penser la Révolution française

• Central argument = Fr. Revolution was less about social/class conflict and more a
conflict over the meaning and application of norms and ideas

• Radicalism of 2nd stage in the French Revolution is explained by idea of popular

sovereignty
• Language of “popular will” presumes a uniformity (-> you get the idea that all
French people had this uniform popular will and they can see that as the ultimate
goal via which the new France should be organised)
 This type of understanding casted suspicion on all difference/dissent
• This understanding of popular will has a lot to do with the impact of J-J Rousseau
(1762) Social Contract
-> the general will as “one and indivisible” has to be created
1. Explaining the French Revolution
2. Revolution as the victory of Enlightenment Ideals

Keith Baker (1990) Inventing the French Revolution

• Late 18th C: Three competing discourses
• Justice: creation of a social contract (of a constitution) as a protection against
state domination (taxes) or arbitrary rule (divine right of Kings)
• Equality: reason/account-giving by government (this challenged divine right
to rule)
• Popular will: the people (not God) as the source of legitimate rule

• Reign of Terror = result of the rise of “popular will” ideal during summer
of 1789
• Revolutionaries as the executers of “popular will”
• Baker argues that dissent or competing narratives could not be tolerated
1. Explaining the French Revolution
2. Revolution as the victory of Enlightenment Ideals

Limitations:
• Little scholarly consensus on any direct connection between Enlightenment
ideas and revolution
• Explanations highlight the autonomy of ideas; leaving out their social
origins

• Arnold Toynbee: scepticism: “new wine in old bottles”

• He says indeed; revolutionaries identified a new source of legitimate
authority (God is replaced by “the people”)
• But few changes were made to the general “estates-based” system, to
its structures and to the oppression through which these structures
were organised -> Only a slightly change happened
1. Explaining the French Revolution
3. Linking social and ideational theories (late 1990s - …)

• There is a focus on the interaction between political and social history:

• Rise of a mercantile class from the 16th Century onwards
• Led to changing economic relations and powers; and to upward social
mobility
• Was accompanied by the spread of bourgeois beliefs -> based on a meritocracy
• It was about the merit-based society (as opposed to the hereditary system)
• Reason/account-giving (as opposed to divine right to rule)

• This spread of meritocratic ideals facilitated uptake of Enlightenment ideas,

such as “popular sovereignty”
2. A conservative backlash
• Continental Europe after the French Revolution:

• Regicide & replacement of monarchy by a republic

• Terror, prosecution and bloodshed

• Napoleonic Wars (1802-1815) – mass armies; mass casualties

• Wider ‘European context’

French revolution  Democracy today?

2.1. Conservative reaction
to French Revolution
Edmund Burke (1790) Reflections on the
Revolution in France
• Irish-born member of the UK Whig party
(liberals); pro American independence;
against slavery
• Predicted radicalisation of the revolution
and the ”reign of terror” under
Robbespierre
• Foundational contribution to European
conservative thought

“change in order to preserve”

Reflections on the Revolution in France, 1790
“The Revolution was made to preserve our ancient indisputable laws and
liberties, and that ancient constitution of government which is our only
security for law and liberty.... The very idea of the fabrication of a new
government, is enough to fill us with disgust and horror.
We wished at the period of the (Glorious) Revolution, and do now wish, to
derive all we possess as an inheritance from our forefathers. Upon that body
and stock of inheritance we have taken care not to inoculate any cyon [scion]
alien to the nature of the original plant.... Our oldest reformation is that of
Magna Charta. (…) In the famous law... called the Petition of Right, the
parliament says to the king, "Your subjects have inherited this freedom",
claiming their franchises not on abstract principles "as the rights of men", but
as the rights of Englishmen, and as a patrimony derived from their
forefathers.”
Reflections on the Revolution in France, 1790
“Government is not made in virtue of natural rights. Government is
a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. Men
have a right that these wants should be provided for by this
wisdom. Among these wants is to be reckoned the want, out of civil
society, of a sufficient restraint upon their passions. Society
requires not only that the passions of individuals should be
subjected, but that even in the mass and body, as well as in the
individuals, the inclinations of men should frequently be thwarted,
their will controlled, and their passions brought into subjection.
(...)
Reflections on the Revolution in France, 1790

(...) This can only be done by a power out of themselves, and

not, in the exercise of its function, subject to that will and to
those passions which it is its office to bridle and subdue. In this
sense the restraints on men, as well as their liberties, are to be
reckoned among their rights. But as the liberties and the
restrictions vary with times and circumstances and admit to
infinite modifications, they cannot be settled upon any
abstract rule; and nothing is so foolish as to discuss them upon
that principle.”
2.1. Central Arguments – Edmund Burke
1. French revolution = too radical divorce from its own past
• English tradition of “constitutional monarchy” is the result of its own history ; cannot
simply be imported

2. Rights are not “universal” but originate from a particular context, as the
result of a particular history
• “rights of men” versus “rights of Englishmen”

3. Society = a historical edifice; not the product of human design

• Resists Enlightenment optimism and belief in “perfectability” of man and
society
4. Rights need to be balanced with duties
• Man is imperfectly rational and moral (passions, emotions, dependency)
• Natural aristocracy – able to place much-needed constraints on the masses
2.1. Conservative reaction to French
Revolution
• Conservatism
• = not reactionary (as in, restoration of Ancien Régime)

• Instead: “Change to Preserve”

• Embracing of modern elements to restore/stabilise power
but never losing hold of the traditional power
• This is done by implementing modern bureaucracy and
administrative centralisation
• Public office = a way for appeasing revolutionaries
• Centralisation = heightened control and censorship
2.2. Congress of Vienna
1815 Congress of Vienna (Peace treaty)
• France + the great victors (Prussia, Russia,
Austria and Britain)
• Delegations from Sweden, Spain and
Portugal

• Two main aims:

• Restore international peace
• Create a new equilibrium among great
European powers to prevent war

• Restore domestic stability

The Congress of Vienna, watercolour etching by August
• Instrumentalisation of monarchic Friedrich Andreas Campe, in the collection of the State
Borodino War and History Museum, Moscow.
dynasties: divine right to rule + family
Europe in 1812
2.2. Congress of Vienna
Why was France not punished more
severely for the Napoleonic wars?
• Control of French power
• France = a reduced but major European
power
• Fear that a punished France would seek revenge
• Break up of France could strengthen one country
to such an extent that it would become
threatening in turn

The Congress of Vienna, watercolour etching by August

Friedrich Andreas Campe, in the collection of the State
Borodino War and History Museum, Moscow.
2.3. Liberal challenges (1830 revolutions)
• Context to the July Revolution in France
• King Charles X who is ultra-royalist restored the House of Bourbon

• March 1830: Parliamentary notion of “no confidence” against King and

the Ministry
• Charles X dissolves parliament, delays elections; elections confirm
opposition
• July Ordinances: King reclaims his “divine right to rule”
• suspension of freedom of press, newly elected Chamber dissolved,
deputies’ right of amendment (to King’s laws) suspended;
commercial middle-class excluded from future elections
• Of course it doesn’t work => Protests, armed confrontations, police raids on
press offices => Charles X abdicates
2.3. Liberal challenges (1830 revolutions)
• Result of the July Revolution in France: Fears for a renewed age of terror under a
Republic; constitutional Monarchy under Louis-Philippe, Duke of Orléans:

“France has desired that the monarchy should become national; it does not desire that it
should be powerless.”

• Recognition of “popular sovereignty”

• White flag of the Bourbons was replaced by the people’s flag (tricolour)
• Title: “King of the French” (see constitution of 1791); no legislative powers;
limited executive authority
• Democratisation
• Chamber of Peers (Senate) transformed from a hereditary body into a
nominated house; doubling of franchise
• Doubling of franchise (from 94,000 to 200,000 by 1848); but still
Charles X (1757-1836) in coronation robes Louis Philippe I (1773-1850), ”Citizen King”
2.3. Liberal challenges (1830 revolutions)
• By 1830, Europe was split by:
• Conservative states (Russia, Habsburg Empire, most of Germany and Italy)

• Liberal, constitutional states (Britain, France, Portugal, Spain, Belgium, Swiss cantons)
• Portugal became a constitutional monarchy
• Drafting of constitutions in Swiss cantons
• Reactionary revolution against Ferdinand VII in Spain (who was considered too
liberal)
• Belgian Revolution – Independence from United Kingdom of the Netherlands, and
creation of a constitutional monarchy; with very liberal constitution
3. Radicalisation
• 1830 made a breach with the conservative order…yet most
revolutionaries were liberals, even those who were committed to
constitutional reform and, much like conservatists, the liberals, were
anxious about the danger of social unrest

• Although, urban workers and peasantry remained largely dispossessed

and disenfranchised

• “Hungry Forties” (1845-1848) paved the way for a new series of

revolutions
• Agricultural disaster, potato blight (Ireland), population growth
3. Radicalisation: The “social question”
• Report on housing of the poor in Lille (France, 1832):
”In their obscure cellars, in their rooms…the air is never renewed, it is infected; the walls
are plastered with garbage…If a bed exists, it is a few dirty, greasy planks; it is damp and
putrescent straw…The furniture is dislocated, worm-eaten, covered with filth…The
windows, always closed, are covered by paper and glass, but so black, so smock-
encrusted, that the light is unable to penetrate.”

• Yet:
• Poverty was still conceived as a a sign of individual flaws and lack of morals
• Alcoholism, vandalism, prostitution were seen as (immoral) causes of poverty (not
consequences)
• Policies reflected this attitude:
• Able-bodied labour forces should be discouraged from idleness / public works for the
unemployed (France)
• Nobless oblige: charity work but little structural/guaranteed support for the poor
3. Radicalisation
• The endings of the July Monarchy
• 1840s: Social crisis and chronic political instability
• The agricultural and industrial crisis was in its peak: massive
demonstrations were taking place in Paris
• Plural attempts to murder the King
• King refuses social reform or an expansion of voting rights that would
change the situation of these agricultural and industrial sectors; and he
restricts political freedom

• 1848: Workers’ revolution; end of the French experiment with

constitutional monarchy; return of the Republic which ensures
universal male suffrage
3.1. 1848 revolutions
• The Year of the Revolution (= Spring of Nations, People’s Spring,
Springtime of Peoples)
• A series of political upheavals throughout Europe; widespread revolutionary
wave; most of them were led by coalitions of middle-class and workers (->
most of them industrial and agricultural based workers)
• Some successes of these revolutions were -> serfdom ended in Austria and
Hungary, end of absolute monarchy in Denmark, introduction of universal male
suffrage in France
• Great-Britain and Russia were not affected
• Russia: absolute rule; lack of public sphere (freedom of press); difficulty of
communicating across country
• Great-Britain: Great-Britain knew steady changes much earlier -> King’s power was
reduced much earlier
3.1. 1848 Revolutions
• These revolutions were only really successful in France…yet, did have a rapid polarisation and
conflict effect among revolutionaries in France as well
• Liberals (“république démocratique”): constitutional reform, in favour of the universal
male suffrage, worked for political and civil rights, they were primarily interested in
economic freedom
• Radicals (“république démocratique et sociale”): greater democratisation and more
fundamental social reform, they seeked equality

• The middle-class aligned themselves more with the liberals:

• So there is a growing alignment between the liberals and the conservatives
• Conservatives fuelled anxiety towards “workers militancy” – dependency of liberals on
forces and popular support of conservatives
• Roll back of political liberties becomes an issue for both groups: legal restrictions on
the press, forced closure of various newspapers, repression political clubs
3.1. Impact of 1848 revolutions
• While being a victory for conservative power…. also, it were also crucial
steps in a process of democratisation
1. A consolidation of the role of parliaments
• Few liberal constitutions that were introduced in 1848 survived yet some formerly
absolutist monarchies retained a form of parliamentary government (Piedmont and
Prussia)

2. Equality - abolition of serfdom and seigneurial rights in central Europe

3. Unprecedented levels of political participation
• Basis for political parties and ideological families

4. Gradual extension of the right to vote

• France: reintroduction of universal male suffrage (triumph of democracy; never reversed)
• Mid 19th C.: gradual integration of middle-class, workers and peasants in the electoral
system
3.2. 19th C: a slow democratisation
• Elected parliaments yet right to vote was still limited to qualified men
• Educated, property owning men (tax paying men over 21)
• Qualifications served to ensure that the poor masses would not use parliament to confiscate
property from the rich
• By 1900, only New-Zealand had universal suffrage, and 17 other countries had universal male
suffrage

• Composition of parliament reflected “old powers”

• Parliamentarians were not a professional class (unpaid MPs)
• System of plural voting to balance extension of voting rights
• UK, 1840: 80% of parliamentarians still represented the landed interests and interests of
bourgeois entrepreneurs

• Campaigns for suffrage reform were mainly the initiative of middle-class reformers
• Competition with aristocracy
• Lawyers and doctors outraged by the excesses of industrial capitalism
Questions to help you study
• How to explain the French Revolution? Was the Revolution the result of growing
bourgeois class consciousness? Should we understand the French Revolution as an
attempt to dismantle the Three Estates system? Why (not)?
• What was Edmund Burke’s central critique on the French Revolution?
• What was the “Congress of Vienna” about?
• Why was France not punished more severely by the victors of the Napoleonic wars in
1815?
• Why do we call the architects of the ”Congress of Vienna” conservatives and not
reactionaries?
• What was the main political impact of the 1848 revolutions?
• …